Why STEM Needs Feminist Science Studies

The Weaponization of Science

Dr. Nancy Hopkins with Salvador Luria and David Baltimore at the MIT Cancer Center, 1980s. Hopkins is a cancer scientist and activist for advancing women in STEM.

Exploration of discrimination and bias in the sciences has been formalized into the field of feminist science studies. Feminist science studies is a multidisciplinary body of feminist scholarship on gender and science which arose in the 1960s as part of academic feminism. By the 1970s, scholarship made clear that science was not only hostile to female employees and women within its ranks but had a history of providing ideologically-motivated support to sexist and racist theories.

Scientific studies either ignored the role of gender and developed unbalanced conclusions or used results which were flawed to support sexist misconceptions about male “superiority”. This scholarship revealed that science was a gendered, political, and social institution. Unfortunately, after initial collaboration with the women’s movement, feminist science studies and women in STEM largely went their separate ways. With the exception of equity studies, there is minimal collaboration and communication with female scientists and feminist science studies scholars, to everyone’s detriment.

A Feminist Epistemology

Protesting for animal rights in research. Image.

In order to combat claims that their research was “unscientific”, feminist science study scholars worked to develop a new type of research which would incorporate feminist values. These methods were more than just adding a gender component into already existing scientific models but developing a broader knowledge base of feminist viewpoints and standpoints without lapsing into gender essentialism (Wylie et al. 1989). Using critical analyses and scientific methodology, feminist science studies scholars and feminist philosophers were able to critique science and build feminist scholarship by demonstrating that they did not lack commitment to scientific values like “Value-neutrality” and “objectivity” (Richardson 2010). Proposed feminist methodologies include:

• Acknowledgement of gender, race, class and other inequalities in science knowledge and production

• A strong commitment to reduce these inequalities in scientific knowledge production and distribution

• Integrating personal, lived experiences of marginalized people using qualitative methods into scientific research

• Developing actionable goals for improving representation in scientific knowledge production and distribution

• Critiquing research hierarchy and how it is shaped by the identities of the researcher and institution

• Developing scientific methods that give research subjects more power.

These methods work to make STEM not only more accessible, but inclusive of diverse experiences to prevent science being abused or weaponized against the public. This includes Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocols to provide all necessary information about a research study involving human subjects, data privacy for students and subjects, well-rounded demographic sampling, laws prohibiting discrimination in the workplace and classroom, equal pay, equitable funding, ethical training of researchers, mixed methods research, and improving scientific methods. These efforts have expanded the scope of science and reduced bias.

Abuse of Science

Feminist science exposes shoddy scientific methods, broad generalizations from limited or flawed results, and unequal funding. For example, early to mid-20^th century arguments against women’s education suggested they would become “sexually frigid”, resulting in lower marriage and birth rates due to these “neuroses” acquired from education. Professional women in the early to mid-20^th century were often accused by child-rearing experts and therapists (some women and Home Economists) of neglecting their family for work (Rhode 1988; Dreilinger 2021). In fact, married women had worse mental health in the 1950s and 1960s than single women or married men and expressed greater desire for economic independence, self-actualization, and self-esteem (Rhode 1988).

Homophobia hampered AIDS research for years and created a hostile public attitude towards the illness. SF Examiner.

Biology is a particularly well-explored field where sexist assumptions influence results. For example, gender assumptions delayed the development of models for chromosomal sex determination and resulted in incorrect assumptions around chromosomes and sex traits (Richardson 2010) (Harding 1986).

One of the most damaging and far-reaching abuses of “science” has been to advance heteronormativity and gender essentialism. Heteronormativity refers to the prevalence of social and sexual “norms” that are based on presumed heterosexuality. Heteronormativity pervades all aspects of science, from how female scientists are expected to dress and act, to scientific development and research, and to how women relate to technology. Since Darwin’s Origin of Species, traits associated with the “ideal” scientist have been coded as masculine: objective, disciplined, critical, methodical, detached from political engagement, and indifferent to profit-making (Paul 2018).

Science gradually pathologized homosexuality throughout the 19^th and early 20^th centuries as a means to uphold white supremacy. Same-sex relationships were considered a “threat” to the continuation of Civilization (i.e., white civilization) and those who indulged were considered to be predatory. In their view, lesbian relationships, could result in women being “led” into higher education, social reform, or the intellectual sphere (McWhorter 2017). Lesbians were considered to have “masculine” brains, but to be cunning and sexually insatiable. Apparently, women were to be crushed beneath the demands of an intensely patriarchal society.

Dr. Yamilé Molina, a health researcher during the Women's March on Washington 2017. During both Trump administrations the federal government has denigrated scientific research and cut funding.

“Ethical” scientific research was inexorably associated with the personality traits of the scientist, rather than their actions. In gender essentialism, “Masculine” and “Feminine” are two distinct entities that are associated with anatomical biology alone and have socially-deemed “correct” characteristics. As a result, women who had “masculine” characteristics, such as those associated with a “scientist” were often determined to be “mal-adjusted” (Landström 2013). For decades, physicians and medical literature worked on the “optimal gender paradigm”. This “paradigm” was developed to aid physicians in selecting the “best” gender for intersex patients, essentially forcing them into the gender binary (Rubin 2017). This conflation of anatomical sex and gender in the medical establishment only served to re-enforce gender essentialism.

The Matilda Effect

Rally for abortion rights in Boston 1979. Women’s reproductive rights have been continually threatened in the US despite federal protections.

However, the most well-known area of feminist science studies is the historical recovery of women scientists who were written out of history books. Despite the extraordinary challenges that women scientists faced, many managed to make notable research contributions, which were often under-recognized.

This systematic under-recognition of women scientists has been articulated by Dr. Margaret Rossiter as the Matilda Effect (Rossiter 1993). A response to the Matthew effect (Merton 1968), it originated from the phenomenon that well-known scientists receive disproportionately high-credit in research collaborations due to factors such as name recognition and visibility in academic circles. Since women have been so historically marginalized in STEM, they have been basically “written” out of the history books and severely under-credited for their accomplishments. The Matilda effect was named after the 19^th century American suffragette Matilda Joslyn Gage who argued for greater recognition of women in scientific and religious texts.

In her 1993 paper, Dr. Rossiter traces examples dating back from the 11^th century in which independent female scientists, physicians, and collaborators (married and unmarried) have been denied recognition for their involvement in major scientific efforts or discoveries. Examples include geneticist Nettie Stevens, pathologist Frieda Robscheit- Robbins, crystallographer Rosalind Franklin, physicist Chien-Shiung Wu, astrophysicist Jocelyn Bell, pharmacologist Candace Pert, physicist Lise Meitner, physicist Hertha Ayrton, and physicist Mileva Marić.

In her seminal trilogy on the history of women scientists in the United States, Dr. Rossiter notes that female recipients of doctorates have been systematically excluded from records, scientific societies, awards, and from faculty positions at both coeducational universities and women’s colleges. Despite these trials, women scholars often conducted groundbreaking research in STEM fields. In several cases, the efforts of American women scientists were un-recognized during the award of major research prizes, with the most publicized examples being the Nobel Prize (Rossiter 1982b, 1995, 2012).

The Limitations of Equity Studies

Equity studies are also a common tool used by those advocating for women’s equality. Examining the numbers of diverse individuals in STEM fields is often the easiest, least threatening feminist form of critique. To an extent, it allows some solidarity to develop and attracts visibility towards the fact that there is even resistance to these reasonable changes.

Yet, focusing purely on numbers can obscure the deep structural and social inequalities in STEM fields related to both hiring, admissions and research practices. They also avoid historical patterns related to female participation in STEM and how research and publication are subjected to androcentric influences. Furthermore, the scholarship of “recovering” female scientists work, Harding argues, can give a very distorted pictures of the struggles that the vast majority of women scientists faced, since these women were unusually privileged (Harding 1986). As Rossiter notes, women since the early 20^th century have used equity studies to point out sex discrimination in STEM academic spaces, with little effect (Rossiter 1982a).

Conflict and pushback to feminist science studies

Demonstrators in 2005 calling for dismissing Lawrence Summers as the president of Harvard after his remarks denigrating women’s potential in science, NYT.

Unsurprisingly, there was significant pushback of academic feminist scholarship. The main arguments were that

• Feminist scholarship is “only” relevant to women and doesn’t speak to all of humanity, like “good” science should

• Since feminist scholarship is ideologically motivated it is not “objective”

• There is no methodology or epistemology to support a scholarly program for research or teaching in feminism like other established disciplines

All of these arguments have not held their weight. Feminism has broadened the reach of science to include marginalized populations in studies and tirelessly worked to expand the scope of funding. There are many established curriculums and research methodologies for feminist science scholarships. Additionally, scientific methodologies and protocols have been developed to reduce bias in scientific research as well.

Critique of science and the scientific method is taboo since Western society views the scientific method as progressive. However, science rarely, if ever lives up to the ideal of the scientific method (Haack 1996). An active research agenda not only asks a question, but then select a paradigms, methods, methodology, equipment, techniques, and language to actually address that question (Roy 2013). All of these components are subject to bias but can also widen or narrow the scope of the scientific knowledge being produced. For example, the gendered assumption of female “choice” and male “aggressiveness” in animal behavior limited insight into diverse strategies in animal behavior (Milam 2013). Furthermore, decades of research have fruitlessly attempted to link the X-chromosome to “femaleness” without experimental validation (Richardson 2013).

Overall, feminist scientists receive different educational training than feminist science studies scholars. This has resulted in tension between the two groups. Starting in the 1990s, “epistemological critiques” began to dominate the field over “the matter of women in science”. This coincided with a break between scientific professional women and the feminist science scholars. Some women scientists found this scholarship inaccessible and did not necessarily identify as feminist themselves. By the 1990s and 2000s, there was a sharp division between feminist critical approaches and efforts to help women achieve STEM career goals (Richardson 2010).

A conference on women in STEM called “Balancing the Equation: Where Are Women and Girls in Science, Engineering and Technology?” by the National Council for Research on Women and the Barnard Center for Research shows this “schism”:

“The women scientists tell the feminist science studies scholars that they don’t understand what they are talking about. ‘You’re talking jargon, you’re talking over our heads,’ or they say, ‘What you are saying had nothing to do with what I have to do every day in my lab.’

(Hammonds and Subramaniam 2003). Notably, equity studies in feminist science scholarship tend to criticize “puffy pink feminism” and encourage affirmative action initiatives, going further than most shallow women in stem efforts. Trying to bridge the two groups seems increasingly difficult as the 21st century progresses.

Conclusion

Women in STEM can be rewarded for avoiding feminism in the short run. Unfortunately, even feminist initiatives in STEM are often shallow and, as time has shown, have not worked particularly well. Feminist scientists can also struggle with the setbacks and momentum of social progress since they are conditioned to do work, which is completed, evaluated, and non-reversed. Therefore, the introduction of feminist theory can be valuable for placing feminist progress and setbacks in STEM in a larger context. They can help “lift the veil”, identifying hierarchy, power structures, and abuse of science.

References (Also good Starting Points for Feminist Science Studies Reading)

Dreilinger, Danielle. 2021. The Secret History of Home Economics. W.W. Norton and Company.

Faludi, Susan. 1991. Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women. 2020th ed. New York: Broadway Books.

Haack, Susan. 1996. “Science ‘From a Feminist Perspective.’” Philosophy 67(259): 5–18. https://www.jstor.org/stable/3751505.

Hammonds, Evelynn, and Banu Subramaniam. 2003. “A Conversation on Feminist Science Studies.” Signs 28(3): 941.

Harding, Sandra G. 1986. The Science Question in Feminism. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.

Landström, Catharina. 2013. “Queering Feminist Technology Studies.” In Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies, eds. M. Wyer et al. New York: Taylor & Francis Group., 385–99.

McWhorter, Ladelle. 2017. “From Masturbator to Homosexual: The Construction of the Sex Pervert.” In Queer Feminist Science Studies : A Reader, University of Washington Press, 68–81.

Merton, R. K. 1968. “The Matthew Effect in Science: The Reward and Communication Systems of Science Are Considered.” Science 159(3810): 56–63.

Milam, Erika Lorraine. 2013. “Making Males Aggressive and Females Coy: Gender across the Animal-Human Boundary.” In Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies, eds. M. Wyer et al. New York: Taylor & Francis Group., 206–22.

Paul, Herman. 2018. “The Scientific Self: Reclaiming Its Place in the History of Research Ethics.” Science and Engineering Ethics 24(5): 1379–92.

Rhode, Deborah L. 1988. “Perspectives on Professional Women.” Stanford Law Review 40(5): 1163. https://www.jstor.org/stable/1228865.

Richardson, Sarah S. 2010. “Feminist Philosophy of Science: History, Contributions, and Challenges.” Synthese 177(3): 337–62.

———. 2013. “Sexing the x: How the x Became the “Female Chromosome”.” In Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies, eds. M. Wyer et al. New York: Taylor & Francis Group., 334–50.

Rossiter, Margaret W. 1982a. “Doctorates for American Women, 1868-1907.” History of Education Quarterly 22(2): 159. https://www.jstor.org/stable/367747.

Rossiter, Margaret W. 1982b. Women Scientists in America: Struggles and Strategies to 1940. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

———. 1993. “The Matthew Matilda Effect in Science.” Social Studies of Science 23(2): 325–41. https://www.jstor.org/stable/285482.

———. 1995. Women Scientists in America: Before Affirmative Action 1940-1972. Baltimore and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

———. 2012. Women Scientists in America: Forging a New World since 1972. Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Roy, Deboleena. 2013. “Asking Different Questions: Feminist Practices for the Natural Sciences.” In Women, Science, and Technology: A Reader in Feminist Science Studies, eds. M. Wyer et al. New York: Taylor & Francis Group., 223–41.

Rubin, David A. 2017. “‘An Unnamed Blank That Craved a Name’: A Genealogy of Intersex as Gender.” In Queer Feminist Science Studies : A Reader, University of Washington Press, 82–96.

Wylie, Alison, Kathleen Okruhlik, Leslie Thielen-Wilson, and Sandra Morton. 1989. “Feminist Critiques of Science: The Epistemological and Methodological Literature.” Women’s Studies International Forum 12(3): 379–88.